Greens offer Labor ‘compromise’ on housing

The Greens are backing down from their fight with Labor over long-stalled pieces of housing legislation, following devastating losses in popularity for the minor party at the national and state level.

Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather holds a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The Greens are backing down from their fight with Labor over long-stalled pieces of housing legislation, saying they are willing to “compromise” on the help-to-buy and build-to-rent schemes following devastating losses in popularity for the minor party at the national and state level.

In a letter to Housing Minister Clare O’Neil, seen by The Weekend Australian, Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather said that despite his party’s “disappointment” over Labor’s refusal to shift on crucial areas of the two bills, the Greens had decided to support the legislation as long as the government agreed to immediately build 25,000 shovel-ready social houses and adjust conditions around income thresholds for both bills.

“We are deeply concerned that your government would rather let your housing bills fail than work with the Greens to negotiate a housing plan that takes immediate action fit for the scale of the crisis,” Mr Chandler-Mather said in the letter, sent on Friday morning.

“Our party room is serious about urgently tackling the housing crisis, and therefore would like to make the following compromise offer, which will importantly mean an immediate and transformative impact on the construction of social and genuinely affordable homes, and we believe would be both politically realistic and popular for the government.”

Labor has argued the Greens’ refusal to pass any housing legislation this year is proof the party is only interested in politics rather than outcomes, as Ms O’Neil declared this week the tactic to block and delay action on housing was “reprehensible”.

But in the wake of polls showing support for the minor party have dropped to a nine-month low and massive swings against the Greens at the Queensland election – which some argued was a result of the stance of federal MPs on issues including housing and the Middle East – the party on Friday bent the knee.

Minister for Housing and Homelessness, Clare O'Neil visits a site for 17 new commonwealth funded social homes in Coombs, Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Giving up on calls for Labor to phase out negative gearing or introduce rent caps, the Greens instead revealed they would settle for the government agreeing to just three conditions in order to pass the bills in the last parliamentary sitting fortnight, including the tick-off for 25,000 homes that were not funded in the first round of the Housing Australia Future Fund.

Should the government agree to this demand, the deal struck with the Greens would be very similar to the one made last year over the Housing Australia Future Fund, in which Labor agreed to spend an extra $1bn on public housing in exchange for the minor party relenting on its opposition to the bill.

“The government proved last year, as the result of our negotiations on the HAFF, that it is possible for the government to step up and directly fund social and affordable housing,” Mr Chandler-Mather said.

Labor’s help-to-buy bill, which would set up a federal shared equity scheme to allow first-home buyers to co-own properties with the commonwealth with a deposit of just 2 per cent, was introduced to parliament nearly a year ago and failed to get the support of either the Coalition or the Greens in the months that followed.

One of the key concerns over the bill went to the scheme’s income thresholds being set to $90,000 for singles and $120,000 for couples, with confusion over whether a homeowner would need to pay out the government equity should their income exceed this level following the purchase of the property.

The Coalition also pointed out the thresholds would exclude people from professions including teaching and nursing.

Mr Chandler-Mather said that for Labor to gain the Greens’ support, the government must amend the bill to ensure it did not penalise first-home buyers for changes in circumstance.

“Improve the help-to-buy legislation by … removing the requirement that participants pay back the government’s share of their house if their income exceeds the $90,000 for singles and$120,000 for couples income caps, ensuring that help-to-buy homes remain affordable throughout buyers’ lifetimes without penalties for changing circumstances,” he said in his letter to Ms O’Neil.

The amendment is one of three conditions to securing the Greens’ support, along with changing build-to-rent conditions so developers would be forced to increase the minimum number of affordable tenancies to 30 per cent of dwellings in each development, up from 10 per cent.

Labor must also tighten the definition of “affordable” tenancies by classing this as either 25 per cent of a person’s income or 70 per cent of market rent.

“The changes we are proposing to the build-to-rent bill will ensure the plan can deliver a higher number of genuinely affordable rental homes to low- and middle-income families, instead of letting developers set so-called ‘affordable’ rents far out of their reach,” Mr Chandler-Mather said.